All American Boy

by William J. Mann

  Luz packs a small bag for herself and Jorge. Regina watches her, jubilant. They climb into Kyle’s Trans Am, Jorge sitting on Regina’s lap in the passenger seat.

  “Is he too heavy for you?” Luz asks.

  “Oh, no, not at all. He’s just right.”

  Luz smiles as she starts the engine. “I’ve never seen him take to anyone the way he’s taken to you. Usually he is afraid. Shy.”

  Regina lets the child kiss her powdered cheek.

  Luz backs the car out of the driveway. A heavy blue darkness settles over Dogtown. The wind howls.

  This is the bad part of town. That’s what Regina had always heard all of her life. Mormor said the dirty Eye-talians threw garbage in the street down here. Uncle Axel said whores did their business in the old factory tenements. Robert said pinko commie hippies burned the flag in public.

  And this is where Walter came—

  “Walter.”

  She sees him. There, ahead of them in the street.

  A boy on a bicycle, pedaling as fast as his little legs can take him. Walter. Little Walter. And he’s crying.

  She turns. But he’s not so little anymore. He’s a man now, looking so much like Robert, standing there in Howard Greer’s driveway, opening the passenger’s door on his car to let a boy with orange hair slide inside.

  Regina leans down to whisper into Jorge’s ear. “Do you see that young man there? The one in the driveway of that house?”

  Jorge follows the direction of her finger but says nothing.

  “That’s my son,” Regina tells him.

  “Really, Mrs. Day?” Luz asks, overhearing. “Is that really your son?”

  “Yes. That’s Walter.”

  “What is your son doing in Brown’s Mill? I thought he had moved to the city.”

  “He’s come back.”

  Luz makes a little laugh. “And he lives here in this neighborhood?”

  “There’s nothing shameful about Dogtown, Luz,” Regina insists. “I used to think there was, but I was wrong.”

  They pass onto Main Street, leaving the swamps behind.

  “But I was wrong,” Regina repeats.

  7

  ALL AMERICAN BOY

  It’s the summer of tall ships, fifes and drums, and flags flapping from every house—and Wally Day has just been named this year’s All American Boy.

  “Can you turn this way a little? Yeah, that’s it. Say cheese!”

  The photographer from the Brown’s Mill Reminder snaps his camera, Wally blinking from the flash. Around his shoulder his father’s arm feels heavy and damp. The temperature outside is steadily ratcheting up into the nineties but Captain Day is nonetheless in full uniform, and Wally’s in a long-sleeved shirt with a clip-on blue necktie. After all, it’s not every day that one is named All American Boy by the American Legion.

  “You must be very proud of your son,” the photographer says.

  Captain Day’s face glows as brightly as his buttons. “You bet I am.”

  “How’s it feel to be asked to lead the Fourth of July parade, Wally?” the photographer asks, snapping another shot.

  “It feels great,” Wally says.

  His eyes move over to the kitchen, where his mother is watching from the doorway. She wasn’t asked to be in the picture. Wally feels bad about that but says nothing. She doesn’t seem to mind.

  “Is that it then?” Captain Day asks.

  “I think so,” the photographer tells him. “Until the parade.”

  “Don’t you want a picture of the certificate?” Captain Day lifts the piece of paper that officially names Wally the town’s All American Boy. “For excellence in academic achievement and extraordinary devotion to community and nation,” he reads.

  “Good idea,” the photographer says, snapping a picture of Wally’s father holding the certificate. “You know what they say about the apple not falling far from the tree.”

  Captain Day beams.

  Wally feels as if he’ll pass out from the heat. “May I take the tie off now?”

  “Go ahead,” the photographer tells him, being escorted to the door by Captain Day. “We’ll have you on the front page of next week’s paper, Wally.”

  The boy unclips his tie, popping open the shirt button that’s been cutting off his windpipe.

  “We’ll put this in our scrapbook,” his mother says, finally coming out of the kitchen. She lifts the certificate from the table to gaze at it. Wally can see his name written in calligraphy beneath stark black letters that read ALL AMERICAN BOY.

  “Scrapbook?” his father barks, returning to the room and startling his wife. “We’ll do no such thing. We’ll frame it! Hang it on the wall! This is the American Legion, for God’s sake, Regina. We’re not going to hide it away in a scrapbook.”

  Wally blushes. His father takes the certificate from her and hands it to his son. Looking down at it, Wally feels his face burn.

  “May I change my clothes now and go over to Freddie’s?” he asks.

  His father tousles his hair. “Of course, Wally.”

  The boy carries the certificate to his room and stuffs it into the top drawer of his dresser. He hopes his father doesn’t have it framed. It’s not that Wally isn’t proud of it. He is. He just doesn’t want to have to look at it.

  He changes out of his starched shirt and wool pants. His skin feels clammy. He pulls on a pair of plaid shorts and a T-shirt.

  He’s late. He told Josephine he’d be at her house by noon.

  “I’m going to Freddie’s,” he says, coming back into the living room.

  “Another softball game?” his father asks.

  “Yup.”

  “Okay, son. Hit a homer for me!”

  “Will do!”

  The screen door slams behind him.

  Of course, there’s no softball game. There’s never a softball game when Wally tells his father there is.

  Instead, he’s heading to see Josephine Leopold, who’s eighty-seven years old, and who, in her day, had been a great actress. She had trod the boards, as she put it, with all of the greats: Mrs. Fiske, Mrs. Campbell, and all three of the Barrymores.

  “But mostly Miss Le Gallienne,” Josephine told him.

  “Who’s she?”

  Josephine’s rheumy yellow eyes had narrowed in outrage. “Why, Eva Le Gallienne was the greatest actress ever in American theater! Don’t start with me about Kit Cornell! Or Helen Hayes. Hah! Miss Le Gallienne had more talent in her pinky finger than any of the rest of them had in their whole bodies!”

  Wally smiles as he pedals his bike down Washington Avenue, thinking of her. Josephine’s become this presence to him, this big, colorful, commanding presence that fills up his mind. When he’s with her, it’s like she takes up all the space, sucks the air out of the room. When he thinks about her, he’s got no room left to think about anything else, no room for any other foolish little inconsequential thoughts that might—

  “Hey, watch it, kid!”

  He has to slam on his brakes to stop his bike from zooming right out into traffic. The light’s changed to red at the busy Washington and Fisk Drive intersection. He waits impatiently. A Camaro full of teenagers rolls up next to him. The kids are all singing along with the radio: Life is a rock—but the radio rolled me—got to turn it up looooouder—so my DJ told me …

  One of the girls looks over at Wally on his bike. He recognizes her from the grade ahead of him in school. She smiles at him. He blushes, turning away.

  The light changes and he makes a dash across the street, quickly zigzagging down Gate Road. It’s ten after twelve. Josephine doesn’t like to be kept waiting. He rides straight through a game of soft-ball some boys are playing in the street in front of her house.

  “If you want to succeed as an actor,” she calls from the front door, “it’s best to be on time for auditions.”

  She fills up the entire door frame. She’s a tall woman, at least six feet, with broad shoulders and short red hair. Wally figures she must dye i
t that color. It’s red almost the color of a fire engine.

  “I’m sorry, Josephine. There was some guy at my house taking pictures.”

  “Pictures?”

  “Yeah. I was named All American Boy.”

  She grunts, stepping aside so he can enter the house. “And what does that mean?”

  Wally sighs. “That I get good grades, I guess. And I’m president of my class.” He pauses. “And I’m patriotic.”

  “How do they know that? Are you out there waving a flag for some bicentennial pep rally?”

  “No.”

  “What a useless honor,” she sniffs. “What will you ever do with it? How can it ever help you?”

  He shrugs.

  “I assume your father was very pleased,” she says, folding her arms over her chest. She’s wearing a long red housecoat, fastened at the throat with a safety pin.

  “I guess it is kind of stupid,” Wally says.

  “Who would want to be All American anything? If I’d had my way I’d be living in Paris. This country had its chance in the 1930s. We might have become a nation with a conscience, with values, ideals. But instead what do we do? We hound men to death for their political beliefs. Our highest elected official is forced out of office for criminality. The land of the free. Hah! I’ve never heard of anything so absurd.”

  Wally sits down on her sofa, looking up at her. “I’m going to have to lead the Fourth of July parade on Saturday.”

  “You poor child.” She places a hand over her heart, feigning weakness. “How will you ever get through it?”

  “The photographer said I’ll be on the front page of the paper.”

  She shudders. “It must have been quite the morning at your house.”

  Wally smiles. “It was. My father put on his naval uniform and everything.”

  “And he let you leave all that flag-waving so you could come here and study to be an actor?”

  Wally sighs. “He doesn’t know that I’m here.”

  She glares down at him. “You’re playing baseball or something silly like that.”

  “Yeah.” Outside he can hear the whoops and shouts of the boys playing softball in the street.

  It’s been three months. Three glorious months since he met her. For his final grade in his civics class, Wally had chosen to write an essay about Josephine. His assignment had been to write about someone interesting, someone who’s had an interesting career or done interesting things with their life. Quite naturally, Wally’s teacher assumed he would choose his father, but instead the boy selected old Josephine Leopold, the retired actress and eccentric recluse who people whispered was a Communist. Wally had long heard the stories about her. She lived in the house where she’d been born some eight decades earlier, before starting out on a career that took her from Brown’s Mill to Broadway to Paris and finally all the way to Moscow.

  “Well, I admit she’s interesting,” Wally’s teacher had said. “But she wasn’t a star, Wally, not really.”

  Yet Wally would not be dissuaded. The old woman had arched a suspicious eyebrow at him when he came knocking, but she’d let him in, and they ended up talking for hours. She showed Wally programs with her name heading the cast lists at theaters as far-flung as Des Moines and Syracuse and Pittsburgh and Kansas City. She showed him photographs: she and Miss Le Gallienne, she and Lionel Barrymore, she and Lord Olivier.

  “And you were born here, in Brown’s Mill, just like me,” he said, in awe.

  “That I was.”

  “But you left, and you became a star.”

  She smiled, clearly relishing Wally’s admiration. She told her stories and he listened raptly. He got an A on his report, and when he returned to show Josephine his grade, he confided to her his secret dream, something he’d never told anyone else.

  He wanted to be an actor.

  “The theater is a great calling, but one not easily understood by those who do not hear it,” Josephine told him. “And neither is it an easy path, my young friend. A life in the theater is not an easy path, nor should it be.”

  “I want it,” he told her. “I want it more than anything.”

  Now that he’s being taught by her, now that he’s been taking instruction these last several weeks, he wants it even more.

  “All right now,” she’s saying. “Did you study your lines?”

  Wally nods.

  “Fucking out, man, fuckin’ out!” The high-pitched voice of one of the boys in the street comes through the window.

  Josephine shudders, moving over to pull the window down with a bang.

  “Now,” she says, turning back to Wally, “move into character.” She assumes her position in the middle of the parlor, drawing herself up to her full height. Her chin juts forward. “You are Alice and I’m the Red Queen.”

  Wally stands in front of her and imagines himself as Alice in Wonderland. There was no discussion about him playing a girl’s role. Wally had understood it was irrelevant. This is the theater, and he is an actor. He can play anything.

  “Alice is facing left,” Josephine instructs. “She has been running from the Pack of Cards, but now she slows down wearily and comes to a stop.”

  Wally pantomimes the action. It is important to convey the weariness Alice feels. It’s central to the scene. He huffs a little, hangs his head, but is careful not to overdo it. Josephine had scolded him yesterday for doing that.

  “Presently, from the left,” Josephine says, the stage directions still memorized from decades before, “come the thump, thump, thump of footsteps.” She makes the sounds with her feet. “Enter the Red Queen.”

  She draws herself up even taller, her red housecoat lifting to reveal wrinkled, flaking, bare feet beneath.

  “Where do you come from and where are you going?” Josephine’s voice is high and shrill. “Look up, speak nicely, and don’t twiddle your fingers.”

  Wally attends to all of these directions as best he can. “You see,” he says, his throat dry, “I’ve lost my way.”

  “I don’t see what you mean by your way, all the ways here belong to me—but why did you come out here at all? Curtsy while you’re thinking what to say. It saves time.”

  Wally does. “I’ll try it when I go home the next time I’m a little late for dinner.”

  “No, no, no!” Josephine calls. “You dolt!”

  Wally’s confused. That’s not the next line. Then he realizes she’s no longer the Red Queen. She’s Josephine again and she’s scolding him.

  “That should be said as an aside!” She storms across the room, fuming. “Didn’t you read the script at all? You’re talking to the audience, not to me! It was Miss Le Gallienne’s brilliant insertion of wry humor! Oh, Wally, if you failed to see the line as an aside, I’m afraid you’ll never become a good actor.”

  “Give me another chance.”

  “Why should I?”

  He’s momentarily unsure of his answer.

  “Because … because … somebody must have given you another chance once. You got out of here. You left Brown’s Mill and became a great actress. You couldn’t have done it all on the first try.”

  She narrows her old weak eyes at him. “Your father wants you to be a military man.”

  “Please give me another chance.”

  From somewhere in her house a clock chimes once. The shades are drawn against the bright day and the temperature in the room is stifling. Wally realizes he’s sweating. Yet even with the window closed he can still hear the boys playing softball.

  “He’s safe, man! Safe!”

  “I did Chekhov in Moscow,” Josephine is saying dreamily. “It was the greatest night of my life. Uncle Vanya. I played Sonya.” She laughs. “It was a long, long way from here.”

  Wally listens.

  “Do you realize what an honor it was for me to do Chekhov for the Moscow Art Theater? I can still hear the applause from that night. The roses thrown at my feet. The reviews were glowing—”

  “What did they say?”

>   “‘A bright star from the heavens,’ they called me. They said I was Sonya. They didn’t know, didn’t care, that I was a tailor’s daughter from Brown’s Mill, a tall, gangly, homely boy-girl who never finished the seventh grade. They just knew that, standing there, on that stage so far away from here, I was Sonya. That I was a bright star from the heavens doing Chekhov at the Moscow Art Theater!”

  She stands there in the middle of the parlor, consumed by the memory.

  “These sad autumn roses,” she says suddenly, a voice different from her own. “Winter will be here soon and they will all be gone. Perhaps then, Uncle Vanya and I can get back to work.”

  Her eyes search out something Wally can’t see.

  “And in the long evenings,” she says, “we can sit together and do our work, Uncle Vanya and I. Work will save us. We’ll live through a long, long line of days, endless evenings … and God will take pity on us, and you and I, Uncle, darling Uncle, shall see life bright, beautiful, fine, we shall be happy and look back tenderly with a smile on these misfortunes we have now—and we shall rest.”

  She kneels down with some difficulty, her knees creaking, lowering her head now to gaze at an invisible photograph she holds in her hands.

  “We shall rest! We shall hear the angels, we shall see the whole sky all diamonds, we shall see how all earthly evil, all our sufferings, are drowned in the mercy that will fill the whole world. And our life will grow peaceful, tender, sweet as a caress. I believe, I do believe … Poor, dear Uncle Vanya, in your life you haven’t known what joy was …”

  Large tears drip down off her face. Wally can almost hear them as they hit the carpet.

  “But wait, Uncle Vanya, wait … We shall rest … We shall rest … We shall rest …”

  She is still. She doesn’t move.

  Wally applauds. The sound of his little boy hands clapping echoes in the dark old house.

  Josephine says nothing. She remains fixed in position, kneeling on the floor.

  “Bravo!” Wally calls. “Encore, encore!”

  Then slowly, softly, gently, she falls over onto her side.